1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to a application verification, and more particularly to a generic device driver simulator for aiding in the development of applications.
2. Description of Related Art
An operating system executes on the various microprocessors, and serves as the interface between the various application programs and the hardware of the computer system. The operating system communicates with the various peripheral devices via input/output (I/O) control programs referred to as device drivers. A device driver acts as an interface between the operating system and the corresponding peripheral device. The device driver provides control commands to activate the peripheral device and to check the device status to determine when it is ready for a data transfer. The device driver also performs error checking when transfers are occurring to ensure that the transfer has completed successfully. Further, the device driver responds when the peripheral device indicates completion of the control commands.
To write a device driver program, a detailed knowledge of the peripheral device is required. Consequently, device drivers are typically provided by manufacturers of the peripheral device. In many instances, the actual peripheral device hardware may not be available while the device driver is being developed by the manufacturer. As a result, actual testing and any debugging changes that need to be made must wait until the actual hardware becomes available. However, this increases the development time for the application software.
It is possible to develop device specific simulators. However, developing and maintaining a device specific simulator can be cost prohibitive. The simulator is often as complex as the device itself because it encapsulates all knowledge of the device behavior. This results in high initial development cost, high maintenance cost, and difficulty keeping simulation in sync with real device.
It can be seen then that there is a need for a generic device driver simulator.
It can also be seen then that there is a need for a device driver simulator that has the knowledge of the device specific behavior moved out of simulator program code.